Charles,
The NT seems to adopt the LXX’s substitution of the Name by Kyrios. Does this play any role in whether Christians “should” pronounce Yahweh?

Let me elaborate. There are Greek texts of the OT that have the Name in Greek transliteration, apparently meaning that it was to be pronounced by its readers. The NT has none of this. Therefore, I think the Vatican’s decision is defensible as perfectly in line with traditional Christianity all the way back to the NT authors themselves. I do not mean to say that the NT obligates us to say “Lord” instead of Yahweh, but either option is a biblical option.

I’ve four reasons never pronouncing YHWH in public:

First I never call my biological father by his firstname “Henk”, maybe this is cultural, but in calling him father or Sir, is some kind of honor. I think this is the same for our God.

Second, in the Netherlands (so also cultural) it’s forbidden to speak with the Queen like “Hi Beatrix” or shortened “Hi Trixie” (if you do you can get 1 year in jail), you must say “my majesty”. If you have to speak with a royal human in this way, how more for the most high God in universe?

Third, in the past I’ve seen Christians singing JHWH many times in a tantra-like song. It was horrible, they didn’t even know what they were singing.

Last, by pronouncing YHWH in public you can hurt others like Jews and (orthodox) Christians, because they are more under “traditional law” as others.

Somehow I doubt that the Vatican is actually as concerned with returning to the practices of New Testament times as they make it sound in this statement. If they were, they would all become Baptists! (wink, wink.)

In all seriousness, this is a backwards move for Roman Catholicism that only enforces what the New Perspective on Paul is trying to disprove–that the RCC and first century Judaism really do have as much in common as Luther said they did.

I certainly agree that there are contexts in which I would not pronounce the Tetragrammaton. For instance, during classes with rabbinical students I would not pronounce it out of respect for the minority of students who would have been uncomfortable with this practice. I know some Christian scholars who do not use Yahweh in their writing for this same reason. I do not follow this practice (except if I were writing for a Jewish publication or to a primarily Jewish audience) but I respect their position.

I think this sort of reasoning may be one of the reasons why the NT uses kurios–early Christians arose out of a culture that had this practice and this community probably would have had one more reason to dislike Christians if they had openly said or wrote the Tetragrammaton.

Ed, I certainly am not as familiar with the Greek texts as you–what besides the Hexaplaric material contains vocalizations of the Tetragrammaton?

JP, your analogy with royal protocol is a good one, however, I think that the very fact that the personal name of God is freely used by OT authors reveals their theological outlook in which both the transcendence and immanence of God should be held at once. At the same time as people call God by his personal name they also hold him in respect and submit to him. I would also say that you might not call your father by his personal name, but you call probably him something far more intimate than that–dad; and this is exactly what Jesus himself did as well.

Charles,

I’ve also spend a good deal of my academic life at a school with a high Jewish population. One interesting thing I noticed at Brandeis was that only Jewish profs and students could say the Name. Any other profs and students were set upon for not being culturally sensitive. Kind of an ineresting dynamic.

Personally, I never say the Name at conferences or departmental meetings. I will occasionally say the Name in class, but those are far and few between.

Charles,

I think the biggest problem with pronouncing the tetragrammaton is that nobody really knows how to say it. It isn’t even supposed to be a name, but a way to refer to the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (The Zoilos inscription from Tel Dan illustrates that YHWH was not a name; flumoxed the Greek scribe, Zoilos did.) According to the meter of the “name” in the oldest pre-monarchial and pre-exilic psalms — of which there are quite a few –, YHWH had three syllables. Yahweh already is a shortening.

There is evidence for the three syllables in an Old English translation from Hebrew where, for instance, “A-do-nai ro-i” is translated as “Drih-ten-me ra-et.” (Note the attempt at matching sounds.) Drihten means, that’s right, “Lord.”

BTW, the use of dots (and other forms of elision) in the DSS comes from the Babylonian superstition that one had better not pronounce or write the name of a king, god or human. Very religious Jews say “HaShem” — even saying Adonai bothers them (I know; ouch, color me red). Although how you are supposed to maintain the meter of any psalm in which the tetragrammaton, vocalized as the tri- syllabe Adonai, is written by the bi-syllable “HaShem” beats me.

As far as the Vatican’s reversion choice, well, there is a lot of reversion going on there nowadays.

Charles,
Sorry for the long response. I feel a need to provide bibliography. I hope that provides defense enough for the length of my comment.

As far as I am aware, only one extant manuscript uses the Greek transliteration IAO for the Name—4QLXXLevb, published in DJD 9, and dated to the first century BCE. Codex Marchalianus (6th cent. CE) has this reading in the margin (see Rahlfs, Verzeichnis der griechischen Handschriften des Alten Testaments, I.1 [2004], 346–350). The Hexaplaric versions do not contain this transliteration, but apparently retain the Hebrew word in Aramaic script, as in the Mercati fragments of the Hexapla, or perhaps, originally, in paleo-Hebrew script, as several other early LXX (revised) manuscripts do, e.g. the Greek Minor Prophets scroll from Nahal Hever.

Despite the paucity of attestation of IAO in manuscripts of the Greek OT, it is clear that this was a relatively well-known pronunciation of the Name among Greek writers. See P.W. Skehan, “The Divine Name at Qumran, in the Masada Scroll, and in the Septuagint,†BIOSCS 13 (1980): 14–44, who cites (p. 29), inter alios, Diodorus Siculus (1st cent. BCE) and Origen.

This evidence has led none other than Emanuel Tov to conclude that IAO was the original LXX reading for the Divine Name, instead of kyrios. See his “The Greek Biblical Texts from the Judean Desert,†in S. McKendrick and O.A. O’Sullivan (eds.), The Bible as Book: The Transmission of the Greek Text (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2003), 97–122 (112–114).

Probably the most developed explication of this view is a dissertation at the University of Cincinnati by Frank Shaw (2002), for which Prof. Kamesar served as a reader. It is called “The Earliest Non-Mystical Jewish Use of Iaw.â€

I myself am not convinced that IAO was the original LXX reading, and I think Martin Rösel makes a pretty good case against it: “The Reading and Translation of the Divine Name in the Masoretic Tradition and the Greek Pentateuch,†JSOT 31 (2007): 411–428 (417–419).

At any rate, it does seem clear that the reading IAO was a known quantity in the first century, at least in Jewish circles familiar with the Greek biblical tradition.

Ed, thanks for the very valuable bibliography–it is quite outside my field but maybe someday I’ll get around to it.

Rochelle, I agree with you that the pronunciation is not a closed case, however, I think the particular support that you brought was weak. YHWH certainly was a personal name not only in Ex 6 but also in the many inscriptions that have forms of: YHWH + Toponym.

Furthermore, I agree with you (and many disagree with us) that Hebrew poetry does have meter but I don’t agree that we can deduce from this that YHWH was pronounced with three syllables. Meter is a more complicated topic than I want to talk about over blog comments, but the fact alone that many people would disagree that there is even a metrical structure to Hebrew poetry means that I wouldn’t rest my case on it.

However, I do agree with you that Mesopotamian culture did influence Jewish practices.

[…] Halton at Awilum.com has a noteworthy post (Yahweh or Adonai?) on the Vatican’s decision to stop using the divine name “Yahweh” in their […]

In addition to Mr. Gallagher’s learned comments, §§20-21 of Metzger’s «Mss. of the Greek Bible» where he treats Greek OT mss. that have some form of Hebrew or Aramaic script for the tetragrammaton and the so-called nomina sacra of Greek OT (and other) mss. deserve to be mentioned in this discussion. The former instances do not, however, in and of themselves offer any proof as to how these occurrences were actually read (aloud, of course), either as some iteration of YHWH or as kyrios. Metzger’s discussion includes many bibliographic references and a few interesting patristic comments on the matter here under discussion.

Thanks, Charles and commenters, for an excellent discussion. I address the matter along different lines on my blog.

[…] Charles Halton: “Yahweh or Adonai?” […]

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What’s the big deal? I don’t think God cares what we call Him, as long as we call ON Him. I know who I am talking to when I say Yahweh, Lord, God, Jesus, Father, Abba, etc. When I hear this name in the Scripture, I know who they a reffering to. When I sing the hymn, Yahweh I know you are there…I know who I am singing to. Let’s focus more on what is going on with those who read the Word, rather than changing words that were commonly spoken in the OT.